The Arsonist


1. The Dance Studio


Complete Summary: The dance studio is in flames, the fire licking up the sides of the building. Oh, we all know what caused this blaze as the Cullens set fire to the studio to cover up the destruction and James' death as well as all the spilling of Bella's blood everywhere. But what about when two Detectives and an Arson Investigator work to find out the truth?

Please Note: All locations apart from the dance studio are fictitious (probably). I have never been to Phoenix and don't know anything about it either... Also, all police methods may not be accurate – I'm not part of a police force or anything, after all. Dates should be accurate if times aren't so much so (but hey, it was never specified).

Rated T to be on the safe side. Shouldn't be too bad. Most likely only in the last chapter anyway.

Blanket Disclaimer: Who thinks I own Twilight? Thought not. Why would I be here otherwise? The Twilight Series does not belong to me; it never has and never will.


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Phoenix Dance/Ballet Studio

16th March 2005

7:58 PM

Detective Cato Delfine studied the burnt out shell of the dance studio in the artificial light of the bright spotlights as firefighters put out the last of the blaze. He'd been called in because, apart from the fire, there had also been a car parked haphazardly outside the dance studio, most likely stolen and also most likely linked. To be perfectly honest, fire and arson wasn't really his area of expertise, but he thought he could safely say that it looked more like a case of arson than anything else.

Arson Investigator Erica Alan came up next to him as she ducked back through the line of police officers trying to keep the crowd well away, her sharp eyes studying the building also as she calculated. Her eyes flicked sideways, assessing the damage as they had assessed the movements of the flames a little earlier licking up the walls of the building. Slowly, she now went up to the steaming rubble and looked over it carefully, although unable to enter it until the firefighters pronounced the building safe.

"It looks like a sure case of arson to me, unless some people were playing with fire inside and accidentally set something alight." Erica announced as Cato followed her to the burned down building at a distance. "Or someone dropped a cigarette in there or something."

"We'll have to search to see if anyone got caught inside." Cato replied grimly. "And any other evidence of what set the fire or if something happened inside."

Erica nodded. "Otherwise though, the fire started from inside and spread outside, looks most likely. I don't know why anyone would want to set this dance studio alight, but with the wooden floors, this building would have gone up easily."

Cato nodded. "It probably would have gone up in seconds," he agreed. "Thanks."

He looked around at the crowd that had gathered not too far away staring at the firefighters still putting out the flames and sighed. A little group of media personnel had also started gathering, snapping pictures and television cameras taking footage. Didn't these people know better than to stand watching? It was dangerous and it had taken quite a bit of skill to keep the blaze from not jumping to the buildings on either size of the dance studio.

Also, they allowed the arsonist – if indeed there was one – to escape quickly. When Cato had first arrived on scene, he and two other officers had conducted a hot search and a cold search, looking to see if anyone was still around. It hadn't seemed like it, but it wasn't as if they could be sure since the crowd had gathered in horror, watching the blaze, allowing the perp a perfect place to hide and a perfect cover.

"I'll be going to get the registration plate looked at now as well as the other evidence I gathered." Cato told Erica now. "If you come by later you can have a look at the photos when we first got to the scene and see what you can get from that." He suggested.

Erica nodded. "Sure. I'll be back here tomorrow to see if we can sift through anything. You're welcome to come and overlook or help out, but I'll be passing anything I find to you anyway. I'm staying here for a while to see if I can find out anymore and I'm going to help the fire fighters see if anything else is still alight." With another acknowledging nod, she turned and went over to the firefighters who now stood, turning over chunks of wood as the last of the fire was extinguished, and checking for embers.

Cato himself turned and made his way over to the crowd on his way to his car. He was attacked by the media at once. He bet Erica had also been attacked in similar fashion when she had gone out to her car to grab her kit.

"Officer, do you think the car outside was stolen?"

"Detective! What do you think caused the fire?"

"No comment." Cato spoke the familiar words as he ignored the questions and pushed past the people. He went to his car, once again ignoring the media trying to gain his attention, and pulled out. What was with people like that? He understood they were only doing their job, but it didn't make him like them any more.

He drove back to the police department on the intent of looking up the registration plate and sifting through the other evidence they could get from the car. As he stalked in the doors, going over to his desk, he overheard snippets of other officer's conversation.

"Have a search of the database. If you put the names in there should be two or three names coming up at least that match. Yes, that's right. Make sure you let me know when you're done, I want some background checks done."

"Yeah, seems she fell down two flights of stairs and out a window. Someone reported it because they heard all the noise, but seemed like she just tripped or something. Such a mess, don't really know if I should believe it myself. Nothing really to look into unless you think she got pushed…?"

"They went to take care of a car crash out on Charlton Road. Yeah, they should be back in half an hour, maybe. It was only a head to tail crash, but the cars were pretty damaged. There's an ambulance there now, I'm not sure how badly they might be hurt though."

Like always, there were many things going on at once. Cato tuned out of the conversations, sat down at his desk and pulled up the database, searching up the registration plate of the car. It was registered to a Henry Bryant, but he was listed as being almost 40 years old, so it either wasn't the work of hooligans – and perhaps the result of too much alcohol – or maybe Bryant's car had been stolen.

It hadn't been reported stolen, but there was a possibility that Bryant hadn't discovered it was missing yet, hadn't been to check it. Cato made a few more enquiries and discovered Bryant had been in the air at the approximate time of the incident. He was due to touch down in about an hour. That Bryant had checked in to get on the plane – and therefore should have been on the plane at the time of the incident – allowed enough evidence to prove that Bryant was suitably innocent.

That also meant that the car had probably been stolen from the airport. Cato made note of that and to check flight arrival times which could approximately coincide with that of the car theft. Well, this was another lead he had now, but he'd still lost a suspect.

With a sigh, Cato pulled out his cell phone and left Bryant a message on his voicemail that his car had been stolen and that he would either need to come down to Phoenix Police Department, or call them so someone could pick him up. Cato then hung up and turned back to the remaining evidence. There had been the prints from the car wheel and taken from the doors, but he would need Bryant's fingerprints before he could say anything. He needed to rule out the car owner and people who may have ridden in the car for legitimate reasons.

But for now, he carefully scanned the fingerprints onto the computer and saved them into a file for safekeeping until he could take a better look at them, then looked through the pictures he had snapped with a digital camera of the crime scene. There wasn't all that much to see, with the car parked outside the burning dance studio. He sifted through them on the computer.

With the way the car was parked, not to mention the driver's door hanging wide open, it was most likely the person had been in a hurry or simply not have cared much, but parking it in such a manner would have been very obvious to people something wasn't right, and therefore measures usually would have been made to park the car properly, either for a quick getaway after setting the fire, or so people didn't realise the fire had started until the fire had eaten away at the inside of the building.

Of course, there was also the fact that the car was very new and a very fast one, it would have stood out, so Cato wasn't really sure how affective just parking it nicely in the street would be if there were people there watching.

As it was, the street had already been pretty deserted at that time, barely anyone wandering the street and the fire had barely been caught, but even so, preventive measures should have been made. Cato judged that the person would have been in a great hurry getting to the studio, but the question was why.

Meeting someone maybe?

Who knew? If it was the case, either a case of kidnapping where they were in a hurry to save someone, or someone trying to stop the arsonist even in a hurry to stop them – and in either case he wondered if he would probably be better off on the look for anything vaguely like human remains in the building. Ugh. This case just got more and more difficult.

His cell phone rang and Cato answered as he continued to look through the images.

"Um, hi, I'm looking for a Detective Delfine."

"Speaking." Cato replied. "Are you Henry Bryant?"

"Yes. You called me about my car being stolen? I got your message when I checked my phone after I got off the plane, but I didn't understand it, only after I got out –"

"That's quite alright." Cato interrupted. "Explanations are not necessary. At this point, I don't feel you are guilty of anything and can only let you know your car was involved in something of an accident. We would like you to come up to Phoenix PD so you can provide us with fingerprints and information about where and from when your car was parked."

"Of course –"

"Would you like to be picked up from the airport?"

"Uh, yes, thanks."

"A car will be there in ten minutes." Cato said crisply, and then hung up the phone.

He called to one of the officers who was helping him out and had conducted the search at the studio with him. The officer left within the minute in a squad car with siren on and with instructions to bring Henry Bryant back with speed.

Meanwhile, Cato ran a search and pulled up maps of the area around the airport. He would need to contact the airport later and have a look through their video surveillance tapes – or DVDs or CDs, whichever it was now. Bryant arrived just as Cato had finished looking through the last map.

"Hello, Mr Bryant." Cato greeted as he got up out of his chair and they proceeded to move to another room. "I'm afraid your car was stolen and it was found just outside a building that was burnt to the ground. It hasn't been badly damaged, although the smoke may possibly have touched it, but it's being withheld for now."

Cato proceeded to question Bryant about his personal details and other details about his car before he began to fingerprint him, then they returned to his desk.

"Could you tell me whereabouts your car was parked?"

"It wasn't in the main car park." Bryant said, frowning in concentration and pointing at an area on the map Cato had pulled up. "It was in the outer car park, nearer to the entrance." His finger drew circles around the approximate area. "I got there pretty early this morning." He explained.

Cato thanked him; let him know he would be called if they needed anything else. Bryant hesitated as he was dismissed.

"When will I be able to get my car back?"

"I can't be sure." Cato replied. "We still need to go over it for more evidence, but once we are done, it will be cleaned and returned to you. In the meantime we would be happy to provide you with a rental if you would prefer."

"Ah…. that would be nice."

"It will be arranged. Go talk to the lady at the front desk and she'll have it done for you."

Cato's crisp tone obviously spelled out Bryant was dismissed once again and Bryant turned and headed towards the front desk as directed as Cato turned back to his case.

At times like this he wished he had a partner to flesh things out with. Still, he guessed if he needed help he could ask his friend and he could double as a partner. Swiveling on his chair, he turned to peer around. Yes, Aleron was at his desk. Good.

Cato stood up and went over to his friend, Detective Aleron Craig who was scrolling through an article on his computer and looked up as Cato approached.

"Hey." Aleron fixed Cato with a look. "I recognize that expression. Need help?"

Cato raised an eyebrow at him, "Were you expecting me?"

"I don't know, what do you think?"

Cato glared at him, "You make me feel incompetent sometimes."

Aleron grinned at him, "No, actually I hoped you might want my help on this anyway. You know me, curious."

Cato sighed. He certainly knew that about his friend. He filled his friend in on the details – which was surprisingly little, really – and leant back against the edge of the table as Aleron processed what he'd been told.

"Okay, we think Bryant is innocent so at the moment we have no other suspects. We should go to the airport tomorrow, go through the video, search up the passenger records then we can start on the fingerprints."

Cato nodded. He thought that was the good way to go. A case often was too much work for just a single person to handle though. It was good to have people you called 'sounding boards' where you could just fling ideas at them – nomatter how crazy they may sound – and see what argument or agreement they will fling back. It was often a good strategy and it was good to have someone's opinion as well.

"You were not working on anything, right?" Cato remembered with a frown.

Aleron grinned. "No. It's like you to forget that, isn't it? I just finished something with Brian, so I'm more than happy to go partners on this."

"Thanks."

"We might as well call it a night, thought." Aleron said with a yawn as he closed windows on his computer and shut down. "It's too late to do anything now." His tone dared Cato to disagree, when he didn't, Aleron smiled and urged. "Come on."

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If you're not understanding the story, you're welcome to review (anytime! Haha) and ask me questions, but if you really aren't understanding any of this at all, I'd advise you it might be better not to read this…

I'm happy to flesh out anything you need extra explaining about though.

Review and tell me if you like it?